84 NOTICES REIATING TO AGRICULTURAL ECONOMY IN GENERAL 



Chinese decree of 8 October 1915 as to agricultural and industrial banks ; 

 a decree of Costa Rica of 6 June 1916 setting up a mortgage department in 

 the international bank ; the federal law of the United States as to agricultu- 

 ral credit ; and the measures passed in Itah' to encourage agriculture in 

 the southern provinces. 



The chief of these provisions have already been noticed or analysed 

 in this review, to the readers of which the yearbook is indispensable. 



The part of the yearbook given up to rural property comprises the stricth- 

 legal provisions which define and regulate rights of property, of usufruct 

 and of security in real estate, prescribe what formalities must be observ^ed 

 when these rights are transferred and when their holders are to be determined, 

 especially in the interest of third-parties ; and which establish the procedure 

 to be followed when an execution is to have effect on real estate or chat- 

 tels. The same part includes provisions of a more specially social or poli- 

 tical character, tending to influence directl}' the distribution of real estate 

 and allow a fuller employment thereof. The following brief enumeration 

 will give an idea of the fulness and usefulness of this part of the yearbook, 

 which could alone justify the publication of the whole. The chapter on the 

 methods of acquiring and transferring rural property gives the text of an 

 Austrian decree which limits for the period of the war the free right to sell 

 agricultural or forest land. The second chapter, on the formation and pre- 

 servation of small rural property, contains a Danish law authorizing the 

 State to grant loans to co-operative societies which aim at procuring small 

 prqperties for their members ; and federal laws of the United States regulat- 

 ing the concession of homesteads in Alaska and the formation of stock-farm- 

 ing homesteads. The third chapter, on usufruct charges and security rights 

 burdening rural properties, gives the text of a German decree specially 

 providing for the exercise of rights depending on mortgages or rents, and of 

 an Italian law as to emancipation from rights of common. The fourtli 

 chapter, on cadasters and land registers, contains a decree instituting an 

 ofiice for the preservation of landed propert}^ in each of the colonies of the 

 group of French Equatorial Africa ; the unified text of the laws of New 

 Zealand on the conveyance of land, based on the Torrens system ; and a 

 Mexican law as to the formation of a cadaster. The fifth chapter is given up 

 to interior colonization and shows strongly the influence of present circum- 

 stances. Thus it brings together a Bavarian law encouraging coloniza- 

 tion by discharged soldiers ; and a British law and laws of South Australia, 

 New South Wales and British Columbia having the same object. A Danish 

 law, which occurs in chapter VI., aims at regulating lawsuits aft'ecting real 

 estate. The seventh chapter groups miscellaneous measures which con- 

 cern property, among them a law of the German Empire as to the repair of 

 war damages suffered by owners of real estate or chattels ; a Prussian 

 decree regulating the redistribution in parcels of certain landed properties 

 in the zones of East Prussia, ravaged b5^ the war ; that part of the Austrian 

 ordinance, as to the third " novel " modifying the civil code, which is of 

 interest to real estate, as well as certain provisions as to selling and letting 

 contracts ; those parts of the new Brazilian code which concern agriculture; 



